


Life in a Glass House

by CherryIce



Category: Entourage
Genre: M/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryIce/pseuds/CherryIce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric's too young to be having a midlife crisis. (<i>It's the same fucking thing every time.</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life in a Glass House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackEyedGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/gifts).



> Written for blackeyedgirl in Yuletide 2008. It was my first attempt at this fandom as well, but it's a bit farther outside my usual, irregular fannish circles. It has been fun, if rather nerve-wracking.

It's a mid-February California heat wave, air thick with humidity. Rainiest fucking month in California, blacktop slick and warm, a never-ending cycle of rainfall and evaporation basting the city. Eric, fresh off filming in North Dakota, feels his breath heavy in his lungs. The people rushing in and out of the airport are frizzy-haired, heads down, collars buttoned and scarves tucked. Eric leans on his suitcase outside the sliding doors, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, jacket draped over one shoulder. His scarf and mitts are stuffed into his carryon, an edge of burgundy wool standing out intensely against the black leather and the grey of the day.

"Yo!" Turtle hollers from the car, pops the trunk and watches in the rearview as Eric tosses his bags in the back and flips him the bird. Fist bumps him as they pull away from the curb. "What, Mr. Big Shot Director is too good to load his own bags now?"

"I've always been too good for that shit," Eric grins, the expression pulling oddly at his cheeks.

"Whatever, man," Turtle says, and starts talking about all the parties Eric missed, the drag queen Johnny accidentally almost took home (twice), Vince's constant battle with the sadistic personal trainer the producers of his newest movie have him working with. Something feels off, but Turtle's gestures are as exaggerated as always, cadence the same, ball cap twisted at a perfect angle to the side, carefully matched to his shoes.

The humidity, maybe, Eric thinks, nodding at all the right places, calling bullshit at Turtle's list of purported conquests; one arm out the window and air rushing cool and wet across his skin.

*

"E!" Vince calls, pulling him in for a manly sort of hug before Eric's even dropped his bag. Looks at Eric at arm's length with a brilliant grin, teeth flashing. He's let his hair grow out a bit, curls tickling at the collar of his white shirt. Johnny's in the kitchen cooking, his hollered greeting drifting into the entrance with the smell of rosemary, garlic, and prime rib.

Dinner is amicable, familiar, conversation easy. It's not like he hasn't been talking to Vince on the phone every other day, teleconferencing with Ari every third, but it's different to hear the stories from the guys in person. For the first time in two months, three months, longer, Eric is not worried about deadlines and contract riders, whether the lead actor of Into the Green has gotten bored with the North Dakota snow and gotten back into the other kind.

"You guys ready to go?" Turtle asks, finally, as the conversation is winding down and Eric is thinking about bed.

Eric blinks, looks at his watch. "Where to?"

"Clamour," Johnny offers. Raises an eyebrow at Eric's expression.

Vince nods. "New place. C'mon, E, we've been saving it for your triumphant return."

"I - "

Turtle snorts. "You're not going to punk out on us now, are you?"

Vince puts on his hangdog eyes. "How long since you've been home, E?"

Vince's eyes are warm and only a little distant, and Eric clears his throat. "Yeah, fine. Someone needs to look after your sorry asses."

*

The club is hot and crowded; smells like every over place on the strip -- gin, vodka, smoke, heavily mixed perfumes. The women are beautiful and the music is a physical force, a steady vibration in his chest, concentric ripples across the surface of his drink. Everyone who is there is there to be seen, and he watches. Artful hair, close dancing, a thin veneer of sweat on the skin of women and men, eyeliner starting to run. Turtle and Johnny have settled themselves in with a group of girls who probably didn't use fake IDs to get in. They are talking with their hands, Turtle gesticulating, and the girls are laughing without leaning in towards either of the men.

Vince, trailing a couple of girls, slips into the booth across from him. There is a curl plastered to his forehead and he is grinning, arms spread along the back of the leather bench. One girl slips in under his arm, and the other, who seems a little less impressed by the Aquaman story he's telling, nestles in next to Eric.

They're both hot, of course, Vince's type, classic-trendy, stacked. Eric sips his drink, ice long since melted, liquid tepid, laughs at appropriate intervals, watches Vince ghost his fingers across the girl's bare shoulder, and tries to figure out if they should make any edits to the final scene of the movie, how he should slot Vince's next movie with Charlie's show and his own next project.

"I'm going to grab some air," he says.

"I could use a breath as well," the girl, Sandra, pressed against his side says, winding her fingers through his and leading him across the dance floor. He'd like to pretend he can feel Vince watching him, but Vince was looking at the girl beside him as Eric pushed into the crowd.

He didn't realize until they stepped outside how hot it was inside, how muggy. There's a fine sheen of perspiration on his skin that becomes chill in the night air, and when he leans back against the side of the building the vibrations thrum into his bones. Sandra offers him a cigarette and he lights hers for her but waves the pack away. "Dirty habit," she says, shrugging, taking a drag. In the streetlights her skin still glows caramel but she looks - not old, exactly, but tired.

He closes his eyes and thinks of Vince. "I know all about addictive behavior," he tells her. When he opens them, she has ground out the cigarette.

"It gets old, doesn't it?" she asks. Looks at the line of shivering wannabes that stretches around the corner, their hungry eyes, the women in tops cut as low as her own, the men with carefully maintained two-day stubble and impassive, vulnerable faces. She pulls a surprisingly large bottle of water from a deceivingly small purse and offers it to him.

"Yeah," Eric says, "yeah, exactly," and it feels like a betrayal, but it's the same fucking thing every time, a blur of names and faces, bullshit and compromise, sex and drugs, like he's five years old again and spinning, like he's fourteen and his father just died and he and Vince are riding the rollercoaster around and around until he throws up all over the tracks.

He's just... so over it. They stand there, on the street, sharing a bottle of tepid water, and he thinks he loves her a little.

*

In North Dakota, he took up skiing. They were filming at Frostfire Mountain and he was going absolutely out of his mind with the snow and the cold and incompetence of the PAs, when one of the on-site ski instructors the insurance insisted on pretty much threw him down a slope. He ended up splay-legged, sore, and with an entirely new appreciation of the strength of character of birds. The instructor, Terry, loomed into his field of view, laughing, as Eric lay on his back, relocating his limbs and feeling snow melt under his collar. Despite the rather spectacular aerial end to his first run, he felt lighter than he had since --

It was easy enough to squeeze an occasional run in between shoots, when they were in the process of slowly and laboriously moving the equipment between slopes. There was a certain zen in it, a blunted edge to his nebulous anger when the wind rushes cold against his cheeks and his legs burn with exhaustion.

Los Angeles, unfortunately, is right in the middle of the desert (no matter what the rain might be telling him), so skiing is pretty much out.

He tries running, pushing harder and harder, until all the air from his lungs is gone, but it doesn't wear him down in the same way. Plays basketball with they guys and can't stop himself from scrapping, elbows sharper than he realizes, accidentally taking down Drama with an elbow to the windpipe.

Fuck it, Eric decides. He's too young to be having a midlife crisis.

There's a gym not too far from the building the Murphy Group occupies, and he falls into a routine. Swimming in the morning, work at the office, meeting with Ari.

"We have a pool!" Vince yells at him one morning, still up at the crack of dawn, barefoot, hair tangled, and "I never get to talk to my fucking manager any more!"

It's a pool that's made for entertaining, Eric doesn't remind him. "I'll see you at Ari's office at noon," he says, watching Drama stumble down from the guest bedroom.

"Vince, leave it," he hears Drama say.

There's a thermos of good coffee waiting for him some mornings. He and Vince don't talk about it.

*

This is how it all fell apart:

"You didn't trust me," Eric said. They were lying above the rumpled blankets of Vince's bed, watching the patterns the wind-tossed drapes painted across the sun-dappled ceiling. "People told you what you wanted to hear, and I didn't."

"I'm sorry," Vince said. Nothing more, nothing less, just reached across to brush a hand across Eric's cheek. "I thought -"

"You thought, what, I was jealous of Billy? I wanted to hold you back?"

Vince's eyes were very bright and very warm. "I don't know what I thought. I just wanted -"

Eric closed his eyes so he didn't have to look at Vince. "You don't ever know, do you? What you want, or why you want it."

"E-"

The drapes tossed easily, a soft rustling, and the pillowcase against Eric's neck was soft and cool. "Let me know when you figure it out."

*

Into the Green doesn't open to Oscar buzz, but the reviews are favourable. Independent and international publications absolutely love it. Vince's latest movie, a light romantic comedy in which he played the best friend, opened the week before to higher grosses and expectedly average reviews.

Terry flies down for the premiere, claps Eric's back on the red carpet. Vince is quiet at the after party, watching Terry's arm draped around Eric's shoulder. Begs off early with a headache.

He doesn't talk to Eric at their meeting, sits quietly until Ari calls a cocksucker with affection.

He's half way out the door before Eric grabs him by the shoulder, pulls him back and slams the door loudly enough that Lloyd jumps.

"Okay, what the hell?" Eric snarls, teeth pulling back, the blunted edge of his anger honed knife-sharp. "You've been treating me like a fucking pod person for the last week."

Vince snaps. "I don't trust you, Eric? I don't trust you? You completely failed to mention your little snow bunny honey."

And that is just - "What?"

"I know how the game is played, so don't even try to tell me that -"

"And how many people did you screw while I was gone, Vince? Do you really want to start this?"

Somewhere in the background, Ari is having a heart attack.

Vince's eyes are narrow, his cheeks flushed. "That's different, and you know it."

Eric has been best friends with Vince since they were six, and he has never wanted so badly to knock his teeth down his throat. "And why is that?" he asks with a sudden, cold, precision. "Did you think I was only gay for you? Fuck, Vince, despite the word on the street, your cock is not actually magic."

Ari's face has turned a purply sort of green, and he appears to be asphyxiating on his own spit. The choking noises he's making remind Eric of that time in the ninth grade when Kathy Williams forgot her asthma inhaler.

From the look in Vince's eyes, it might have been better to punch him.

Vince pushes past him, and this time, Eric doesn't stop him.

*

Eric is sitting up in the kitchen when Vince gets home. It's four in the morning, streets still and silent, and Eric is no more tired than he's been for years. Vince stands in the doorway with his arms crossed, casting a shadow across the living room floor. He takes the bottle of water Eric hands him, smells of smoke and alcohol and perfume. There's a smudge of lipstick where his jaw meets his ear, and Eric turns away. He hears Vince crack open the bottle, hears him swallow, sees in his mind his throat working as he swallows.

There's silence then, nothing but the distant rush of central air failing to diminish the humidity.

"Christ, Vince," he says, finally. Snaps. Rounds on him. "Isn't there ever anything more?"

There's no answer, and Vince won't look at him. "Fine," Eric says. Fuck it, he wants to add, because after twenty-seven years, this is all?

"No," Vince says, and Eric stops before stairs. "No, E, there isn't anything else! This is it. This is everything."

"Okay," Eric nods. Watches his fingers whiten.

"No," Vince says, "no, no, no, you're not seeing -" and he reaches out for Eric, cups his face.

Eric blinks, tension stiff in his spine, uncomprehending, Vince's breath warm on his cheek.

"This, this is it, Eric," Vince says, pulling their foreheads together. Murmurs into his lips, the shell of his ear. "This is everything."

And Eric -

Eric realizes he can finally breathe.


End file.
